Adding to an impressive list of
accomplishments that continues to raise the national profile of the University
of Houston, President Renu Khator has recruited and hired retired NASA
astronaut and engineer Dr. Bonnie J. Dunbar to lead a new University STEM Center
(science, technology, engineering and math) and to join the faculty of the
College of Engineering.

A member of the prestigious National
Academy of Engineering, Dunbar, a professor of mechanical and biomedical
engineering and a UH alumna, will provide transformative leadership in the
development of a new integrated university STEM Center, building upon currently
strong programs in several of the colleges, and leveraging their success in the
larger K-12 community.

STEM education is a pivotal issue for
the Greater Houston Region, which is focused on attracting and sustaining
high-tech industries. Dunbar will bring her STEM network and national and
international STEM experience to UH, an expansion of Khator’s bold hiring
strategy that taps the expertise of top talent through the cluster hire
process. To support this strategy and increase the University’s capacity to
produce more STEM graduates, Khator last year created a $30 million fund to
attract some of the nation’s most talented research faculty in STEM fields.

The STEM Center offers a unique
collection of strengths, including Tier One research and a strategic location
in an international city near the Texas Medical Center and NASA’s Johnson Space
Center. Administered by the Division of Research, the STEM Center integrates
activities from the colleges of Engineering, Education, Technology, and Natural
Sciences and Mathematics. There are only about 160 STEM centers housed at
universities across the nation. A new STEM Center website is planned, and Dunbar
will actively promote STEM education on social media, including Twitter.

Dunbar, who accepted her first
corporate job as systems analyst for The Boeing Company in 1973, has devoted
her life to furthering engineering and science education. One of her goals for
the STEM Center will be to engage and support educational programs for K-12
education. Of note, Dunbar said, is UH’s designation as an Hispanic-serving
institution – one of only two Hispanic-serving higher education institutions in
the nation that also are Tier One. This reflects UH’s commitment to Closing the
Gaps, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s plan to close the state’s
educational gaps in student participation, student success, excellence and
research by 2015. The initiative’s key goal of increasing underrepresented
student participation and success in Texas higher education meshes with her
vision for STEM education, she said.

“Developing a pipeline for careers in
science, technology, engineering and mathematics will play a major role in the
sustained growth and stability of the U.S. economy, and is a critical component
to helping our nation win the future,” Dunbar said. To address the grand challenges of this great
country, we need the new ideas, new companies and new industries created by
STEM careers. This has been historically, and will be in the future, the key to
great progress in the United States.”

Dunbar also is expected to teach in
the classroom next year, an opportunity she embraces. “I will be developing a
new undergraduate course designed to inspire and retain our engineering
undergraduate students—it will explore with them how engineering has
transformed our lives throughout history and will be presented through the lens
of aerospace and space exploration,” she said. “We may offer it to all
undergraduates to help them better understand how math, science, and
engineering are important to developing the technologies surrounding them every
day and solving many of society’s “grand challenges”, from communication and
transportation, to the environment –and even social problems as well.”

Prior to joining UH, Dunbar was based
in the Seattle area, consulting around the country and internationally on STEM
education and space flight technology. A former President and CEO of the Museum
of Flight in Seattle, Dunbar is a much beloved figure, inspiring young people,
including legions of young girls and women wherever she goes. She credits much of her success to her
family, her teachers and professors, mentors, and very positive work
experiences at the Rockwell International Company where she worked on the first
Space Shuttle, Columbia, and her 27 years at NASA.

Before joining Boeing, Dunbar owned
her own aerospace and STEM education consulting company, Dunbar International
LLC. Among her projects, she led the effort to bring a retiring Space Shuttle
to Washington State and helped complete fundraising for Aviation High School,
which is being co-located at the Seattle Museum of Flight. Previously, she was
President and CEO of the Seattle Museum of Flight for five years. During her
tenure at the museum, K-12 STEM programs were expanded to reach nearly 140,000
students per year. Dunbar also founded the Washington Aerospace Scholars
program for high school juniors in partnership with NASA and the State of
Washington and expanded participation in the Aviation Learning Center, the
Aerospace Camp Experience and Challenger Learning Center.

Dunbar also strengthened ties to
regional community colleges, engineering societies and university engineering
departments.

As a NASA mission specialist
astronaut and veteran of five space flights, Dunbar logged more than 50 days in
space. Dunbar trained in Star City Russia for 13 months and flew the first
docking flight between the Russian Space Station MIR and the Space Shuttle in
1995. Dunbar served as payload commander on two flights, participated in a
13-day Spacelab flight as well as the eighth docking mission to MIR. Following
her flight career, Dunbar served in the government Senior Executive Service for
seven years, holding various senior management positions at NASA Headquarters
in Washington, D.C., and at the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC). As Assistant
Director at NASA JSC, Dunbar founded the annual NASA- University Engineering
Research Summit and was responsible for university relations and grant
management.

Prior to working for NASA, Dunbar was
a senior production operations research engineer with Rockwell International
Space Division, where she helped develop equipment and processes for manufacturing
the thermal protection system for the Space Shuttle. For her work, she was
named Rockwell Engineer of the Year. Earlier, Dunbar was a visiting scientist
to Harwell Laboratories in Oxford, England and a Systems Analyst with Boeing
Computer Services. Dunbar received a Ph. D. in engineering from the University
of Houston, master’s and bachelor’s degrees in engineering from the University
of Washington and graduated from the Kennedy School for Senior Managers in
Government at Harvard University.

Dunbar is a Fellow of the American
Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Fellow and Life member of the
American Ceramic Society, Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, an elected
member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and was elected to the National Academy
of Engineering in 2002.

She has been awarded the NASA Space
Flight Medal five times, the NASA Exceptional Leadership Medal, the NASA
Distinguished Service Medal and the Washington State Medal of Merit. For her
service to engineering education, she was awarded the American Association of
Mechanical Engineers Ralph Roe Award in 2009 and in 2012 was awarded the
University of Washington’s College of Engineering Diamond Award for lifetime
public service. Dunbar also is a founding board member for the Washington State
Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of
Texas. She holds seven honorary university doctoral degrees.

Dunbar recently was elected to the
august Executive Committee of the International Association of Space Explorers
(ASE) at the XXV Planetary Congress of the ASE, held this year in Saudi Arabia.
She is the first women space flier in that committee’s 25- year history. In
April, she will be inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame in Florida.

Dunbar grew up in the Yakima Valley
of Washington State on a cattle ranch homesteaded by her parents in 1948. She
learned to fly with the Rockwell Flying Club at the Orange County Airport in
1977 and maintains her pilot’s license. In addition, she logged more than 1,000
hours as co-pilot in NASA T-38s as part of Spaceflight Readiness Training for
the astronaut corps.

About the University of Houston

The University of Houston is a Carnegie-designated Tier One
public research university recognized by The Princeton Review as one of the
nation’s best colleges for undergraduate education. UH serves the globally
competitive Houston and Gulf Coast Region by providing world-class faculty,
experiential learning and strategic industry partnerships. Located in the
nation’s fourth-largest city, UH serves more than 40,700 students in the most
ethnically and culturally diverse region in the country.